Are you an Artist or just a Quilter?
After the recent (today) reminder in the thread about "Manly" quilts that we all quilt for different reasons, the thought came to me... Am I an artist or a craftsman?
A craftsman will take any pieces of fabric and sew them into a quilt top, perfect seams, perfect borders, perfect quilting, perfect bindings. The product is... the closest to perfection any one craftsman can produce.
An artist will take fabric and turn it into an extension of ones mind, ones heart, ones creativity, and using the skills of a craftsman, produce something for the sake of debate, art.
I make quilts as a craftsman, with my heart and soul, but a limited amount of creativity, to please the ones around me. My latest project is a Sunshine and Shadow quilt using 2 inch blocks, strict plain fabrics, black backing and binding, all to produce for my daughter as close to an Amish style quilt as I can do. Not a lot of creativity, the pattern goes back hundreds of years, but a testament of providing her with a beautiful quilt that will never age.
I make quilts as an artist, with my mind designing quilts using fabrics of designers I admire. Robert Kaufmann for years hired inspired designers to produce lines of quilting fabrics that blew me away. Sherill Kahn is one of them. I took 22 fabrics she designed and created a quilt that lies on my bed. A piece of art in my mind. Did I design the fabric? Nope. But I took her designs and created a quilt that symbolizes how I felt when I was traveling 90 to 100 days a year. The fracturing of ones life as you cross time zones, live in foreign places, and uproot your life for weeks at a time. The interesting part is I sewed all those blocks in a hotel room in Germany where I stored a European sewing machine in the baggage room when I was not there.
My artistic quilts involve lots of south western patterns, I am heavily influenced by J. Michelle Watts. If you are ever in the Santa Fe area, visit the local quilt stores and see her work first hand. When I make SW quilts, there are no fabrics with cactus in them. They rely upon the beauty of fabrics that reflect the amazing south west color pallet.
So... are you an artist or are you a craftsman (quilter)?
tim in san jose